By Chris Bailey 09/11/2021 10.56am
People of Ventura County, if you want to preserve any semblance of voter integrity in this county, you must act. As I write this, eye witness reports are flooding in from all over the county:
Camarillo Library, Westlake High School, NPHS, Oak Park High School, Goebel Community Center, Salvation Army in Oxnard are all reporting voting machines are down and lines with 30-50 persons deep are being turned way. This is not voter fraud, but it is voter disenfranchisement. There are others, and I have requested that anyone who had a problem voting at a voting location in any way to write a comment on this article. They are being read, and will be helpful..
In addition, please contact the Ventura County’s Mark Lunn at [email protected] and leave a detailed email about what happened when you tried to vote in person. Location, time of voting attempt, and resolution offered by Mr. Lunn’s staff should be included in your email. Let them know this is unacceptable.
All 51 county-wide in person voting locations had issues with computer problems as of the posting of this article. Persons who were at the Camarillo Library to vote in person were directed to the Camarillo Community Center to vote only be told their computers were down there as well. I happened to be at the Camarillo Community Center interviewing the lead manager of the voting center learned the system in Camarillo was down. I returned 20 minutes later and was told with a group of 4 other voters that all 51 in-person voting locations were down, and I reported at at that time.
The issue was first identified at 9:45 this morning when the staff attempted to access the system, and I was approximately 15 minutes into my interview with the lead voting team worker. The onsite technology person was unable to remedy the situation. As a result, ballots could not be printed and voter identifications were unable to be verified. All persons waiting to vote were asked to either vote by mail or return later in the day.
I returned at approximately 1pm, and was able to then enter the Community Center location in Camarillo and cast an in-person print on demand ballot. There were 5 people casting their ballots at the same time, and the network seems to be up and running with no further problems accessing the voter registry or the print on demand system to vote on a printed ballot. I have no information about being able to vote on a computer screen, but two of the persons who were voting at the same time I was voting were using a computer screen, and they were able to successfully vote without a concern.
There is a comment from the Ventura County Election Board that states the reporting all 51 in-person voting locations were down is false. I am a personal witness to a staff member of the Camarillo Community Center telling me and others that all 51 locations are down. There is another person in an entirely different part of Ventura County who also was informed by staff at their voting location that the entire system was down.
Per the manager of the voting location at Camarillo Community Center, I would have been the first person to vote at the building when it opened at 10am. I was unable to vote, because there were no paper ballots printed in case the print on demand failed, and there was no way to verify my registration and print a receipt that is used for record keeping with each vote. That is a fact. I was turned away, as were many who attempted to vote.
It appears that the system came back up at approximately 12:15pm, but it could have been a little earlier, or a little later. I have records of persons texting me who were able to vote at different locations in the time window, but not before., I think at this point, it would be appropriate for a representative of the Ventura Election Board to provide a printout of voting activity that will show which of the 51 locations were up at 10am and when the facilities were down, based on the same activity record. That seems to be the only way to establish how many locations were truly off line at the start of the in-person voting today.
Please note that as soon as I learned the Camarillo Community Center Voting facility was down, I contacted Miranda of the Ventura County Election Board to notify her, and told her via voicemail I was going to publish what I know at that point, and wanted her to let me know when the facilities will be back up for the voters to be informed. That voicemail should be a record of the phone call, and I expect it to be kept so I can post a transcript of the voicemail to demonstrate I tried my best to confirm what was being reported, and keep the Ventura County Election staff in the loop and to update as quickly as possible for the VOTERS of Ventura County.
In the afternoon of 11 September I contacted the phone number which was posted by the Ventura County Election staff in a rebuttal comment to this article, to give them additional information about the offline status of the network this morning. I was transferred to Monica, as the person who answered the phone stated either Monica or Miranda would have written the rebuttal, and she knew where Monica was. I spoke with Monica for a few minutes, and she stated she DID NOT write the rebuttal, but transferred me to Miranda, who picked up a phone in the same area, as the background noise was the same as when I spoke with Monica. She stated she was transferring me to a different phone, then send me to voicemail.
I left another very detailed message to inform her what had happened earlier in the day, and have not heard back.
That is where is currently stands, but for the comments that either confirm there were problems across the county concerning in person voting, or comments there were no problems AFTER lunch, which seems to be accurate as well. There was simply a failure to launch successfully at 10am on the 11th of September, 2021.
There has been messaging coming from the office of Mark Lunn that the voting system did not crash this morning. I will leave you with this
Computer Crash -” In computing, a crash, or system crash, occurs when a computer program such as a software application or an operating system stops functioning properly” Webopedia
The publisher of Citizen Journal forwarded an email from Mark Lunn as follows:
“All locations DID not crash-false information. Minor tech issues always happen at the beginning of a voting period/day. The temporary workers we employ at the vote centers did not act as trained. They did not need to redirect voters-which they did without seeking guidance from election supervisors. We have a paper based system and others could vote in spite of the tech issues. We are re-addressing that with workers as we speak. “
Readers can follow what I have reported as my experience when voting on 11 September 2021. I had hoped I could communicate with the Ventura County Election folks in Ventura and share the entire experience, but nobody will return my calls. I was at the Camarillo Community Center Voting Room as a scheduled look at the in person voting process, as coordinated with Miranda Nobriga, and Irma Hernandez was also aware I was scheduled to be at the Community Center Voting room at 930am on 11 September 2021 as well. In fact, when I came to the room, and identified who I was, they were expecting me. The report that 51 voting centers, and I quote “the entire in person voting system is down” was stated to myself and a number of other voters who were looking to vote at the Camarillo Community Center at approximately 1025, give or take.
But there is no reason to go back and forth with persons at the Government Center about which voting rooms were down and which were up on the 11th of September. The County can print out the activity record of each voting facility between the hours of 945am and 1230pm and easily demonstrate the activity that was going on at each location. Simple. Just do it. Voters want to know.
My experience in Camarillo was that everyone at the center working to help people vote were professional, calm and doing what they could to mitigate a situation which the leader of the voting room stated “Had never happened before in my history of working as an election volunteer” I am really offended for the staff, and personally upset the Mr. Lunn would blame the staff at the centers for not performing as trained, as it puts a tremendous amount of responsibility for the problems at the launch of in-person voting on a patriotic and civic minded group of people who are volunteering their time to start and complete the election process. I hope Mr. Lunn will apologize publicly as he has blamed them publicly for a situation which was in no way their responsibility.
So there you have it. Mr Mark Lunn can provide the data that will answer once and for all how many voting centers were humming and generating data from the start of voting at 10am to 1230pm, so the citizens of Ventura County can see just how well Mark Lunn was doing his job with assisting citizens to vote. Or he can leave it where it is and blame the only citizens in Ventura County who were volunteering to do the same thing.
I stand by my reporting, because it was what I was told by a representative of the Ventura County Election staff, and it has been confirmed that others were told EXACTLY the same facts, that a complete shutdown occurred of the in-person voting system. I hope Mark Lunn will apologize to his staff in a public forum because it is the right thing to do. I hope the Ventura County full time staff is more responsive when a member of the media contacts them when an issue arises. I am disheartened that I have yet to hear from Miranda concerning my two phone calls to her desk. I would have been MORE THAN relieved to have been able to report that she contacted me, and explained why staff at the voting room level had the impression the system was down. My general impression of the lack of response is they don’t want to explain what happened, as if it isn’t the public’s right to know. But I don’t want to think that way. I want Miranda to call me and send me a print out of what happened, and reconfirm I am still invited to come checkout the massive undertaking of processing and counting the ballots at the Government Center, that she offered last week when I interviewed her on an article I wrote on the Mail-In Ballot. Read that article here
I will post again with more data as soon as it flows in..
Judicial Watch and Election Integrity Project-Ca have been notified and are conducting their own investigations.
Chris Bailey is a reporter-at-large of citizensjournal.us, a business owner, military veteran and longtime resident of Camarillo
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